Tower Town

by Richard Epstein


Towers topple.  That’s what a tower does,
After a time.  The time is flexible,
The towers mostly not.  Abandoned towns
With dirt on top, the barns and beds filled up,
Soiled from the git-go, built and buffed and gone,
Never unearthed, though excavated here
For rubes to gawk at in their cargo shorts,
Display their trinkets, wedding rings, and soup
Tureens of matchless patterning.  The book
In which the set was registered is here;
The epic poems of Hectorus Vir,
Described by steles, columnar petroglyphs,
And monkish annals, haven’t turned up yet.
It’s said he wrote a dozen by the first
Fire and sack, and then the towers fell.
Patricia Wallace Jones